OVERNIGHT. Movie.

A Little Tight

`Hood' Film Slow Starter

July 28, 1993|By Johanna Steinmetz, Special to the Tribune.

It takes a little longer, these days, to hit pay dirt in a Mel Brooks movie. Maybe it's because our expectations were set unreasonably high by "Blazing Saddles" and "Young Frankenstein." Maybe it's because he spawned a generation of corny, pun-filled comedies, some of them as good or better than his. Or maybe we're all just as nutty as he is, so what's the joke?

"Robin Hood: Men In Tights," Brooks' spoof of the Robin Hood legend, gets off to a creaky start before it loosens up and produces laughs.

Robin (Cary Elwes at his most insouciant) escapes from a Jerusalem prison. Returning to England, he learns that the family lands have been appropriated by King John (Richard Lewis, sporting a mole that wanders all over his face) and the tyrannical "Sheriff of Rottingham" (classically trained British actor Roger Rees).

Hooking up with Blinkin, the blind family retainer (Mark Blankfield) and Achoo (comic Dave Chapelle), Robin sets about recruiting a band of Merry Men and wooing Maid Marian (Amy Yasbeck, an actress with more than a coincidental resemblance to Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, who played Marian opposite Kevin Costner). King John and the Sheriff, meanwhile, have to contend with the lecherous hag Latrine (Tracey Ullman, in a flat supporting role).

Once the major players are in place, "Men In Tights," while not steadily hilarious (Brooks is as respectful of a bad joke as he is of a good one), has a lot of silly fun with such anachronisms as Maid Marian's Everlast chastity belt, valet horse parking for a castle party and a Clapper remote control for candelabra.

The film's best bits involve sending up earlier Robin Hood movies (the Costner film comes in for special attention), other films (Dom DeLuise, in an amusing cameo as a Mafia hitman of yore) and even the filmmaking process (a collision of camera and prop is left in for a laugh). In a charmingly funny sequence, Robin and Marian, thinking they're alone, pledge undying love in the quasi-operatic style of a '50s movie musical, their silhouettes projected on a sheet beyond which sit rapt rows of Merry Men.

Political correctness has never had a place in any Brooks movie and this one has a handful of potentially offensive gags. But a song-and-dance routine in which the Merry Men, in their tights and jerkins, protest that they're not "pansies," seems oddly more dated than hurtful.